Hotel Highlights

Rooftop pool with views of the City

Access to London’s most chic members’ club

Energising East End setting

Overview

RUNNER-UP: HOTTEST HOTEL BAR – SMITH HOTEL AWARDS 2014

Shoreditch House is members' club with rooms, set in a converted warehouse in London’s gentrified East End. There’s a pool on the roof, a bowling alley for private hire on the fourth floor and a Cowshed spa to boot. This easterly outpost of Soho House has opened its doors for the public to sneak in, party hard then crash out in comfort.

At the hotel

Our favourite rooms

The names (Tiny, Small and Small+) give the game away size-wise, but book a Small+ and you’ll also get a roomy City-facing terrace. For the widest views, ask for corner room 26 and ogle the Gherkin from your sunlounger. Rooms are colour-coordinated: grey and navy to please the boys, and pastels and coral for the girls.

Poolside

There’s a sunlounger-surrounded heated pool on the roof, with a bar close by. Just behind, the garden area has open fires, a herb plot and double day-beds.

Packing tips

There’s a ‘Borrow Me’ section filled with things to play with, read and watch – so leave the board games, books and DVDs behind.

Also

The hotel has a Cowshed spa, with treatments including the famous facials, massages tailored to your mood and a list of special maternity therapies.

Children

Extra beds can be added into Small rooms for £25 a night. Children are allowed in the House Kitchen and Games Room on the fifth floor until 6pm and in the sixth-floor restaurant until 9pm.

Food & Drink

◐View Gallery

Hotel Restaurant

The House Kitchen on the fifth floor dishes up Soho House-honed dishes such as mac and cheese, Ceasar salad and flat-iron chicken; there's a cheeky curry night on Tuesdays too. Teal chesterfield sofas and shared wooden tables surround the open kitchen, where huge slabs of perfectly roasted beef and golden pork belly are stacked come the Sunday carvery – try to arrive early, tables cannot be reserved and it's very popular. Upstairs, the sixth floor restaurant, next to the rooftop pool, has an urban conservatory feel, with sweeping views over the City. Grab a bar stool to sit around the central concrete table's firepit or commandeer one of the squishy sofas to snack on pork crackling, wood-fired pizzas and completely addictive deep-fried brussels sprouts. Reservations are essential.

Hotel Bar

The action’s mostly on the fifth floor, where you’ll find the copper-coloured Square Bar, next to a strip of ping-pong tables that double as communal workstations and meeting spaces during the day. There’s a DJ on Friday and Saturday nights, and a photo booth to immortalise your Shoreditch shenanigans. Perch on a leather bar stool, or take your drinks skywards to the roof or another lounge area. Tucked away behind an unmarked door, the Library hosts intimate concerts, informal talks and masterclasses – cocktail coupettes optional (but strongly recommended).

Last orders

Dining is from 7am to 11.30pm Monday to Saturday, 8am to 10.30pm on Sundays. The House Kitchen’s after-hours menu runs from 11.30pm to 3am Monday to Saturday, 10.30pm to midnight on Sundays. Drinks are served until 3am (midnight on Sundays).

Room service

Breakfast and a light menu of quiches, salads and sandwiches can be served to your room.

Smith Insider

Dress code

Skinny jeans, cravats, geeky bins and all forms of head gear.

Top table

For more privacy and date-wowing views, ask for the corner table on the sixth floor.

Local Guide

Worth getting out of bed for

On Sundays, make sure you wander down to Columbia Road for some bartering with East End traders at the flower market. Shoppers will love Spitalfields, which opens on Thursdays for antiques and vintage, Fridays for fashion and art, and Sundays for everything. Combine a curry with searching for second-hand clothing on a trip to Brick Lane. If you’ve brought children along, take them to Hackney City Farm (www.hackneycityfarm.co.uk) to spy on the array of donkeys, turkeys and pigs. Something of a local legend, Caravan at 3 Redchurch Street (+44 (0)20 7033 3532; www.caravanstyle.com) serves up an eclectic mix of ‘beautiful things’ – from knick-knacks to furniture, lighting to books.

Local restaurants

Pop next door to the Tea Building for pizza courtesy of Pizza East (+44 (0)20 7729 1888; www.pizzaeast.com), a converted warehouse restaurant with classic (mozzarella and tomato) and unusual (cheese-less with prawns) takes on the Italian favourite. Meat fans will find a second home at the Hoxton Grill on Great Eastern Street (+44 (0)20 7739 9111; www.hoxtongrill.com) and some of the finest steak in town at Hawksmoor (+44 (0)20 7247 7392; www.thehawksmoor.co.uk) on Commerical Street and at Buen Ayre (+44 (0)20 7275 9900; www.buenayre.co.uk) on Broadway Market. The restaurant at The Boundary hotel (+44 (0)20 7729 1051; www.theboundary.co.uk) serves up charcuterie, oysters and rotisserie-cooked fare.While you’re here, visit the Albion café and food store on the ground floor too. For dinner-time entertainment provided by lip-synching ladies (of the transvestite variety), head to Bistrotheque (+44 (0)20 8983 7900; www.bistrotheque.com) in Bethnal Green.

Local bars

Call in to Callooh Callay (+44 (0)20 7739 4781; www.calloohcallaybar.com) on Rivington Street for some finely mixed cocktails, including punch served in a gramophone. Round the corner, try Lounge Bohemia (+44 (0)7720 707000) on Great Eastern Street for basement-based Eastern European drinks. At the Commercial Tavern (+44 (0)20 7377 8455) down the road on Commerical Street, sip from tumblers and admire the chandeliers. For an impressive inventory of Czech beers and classic cocktails, settle in among the exposed brick walls of Prague (+44 (0)20 7339 9110; www.barprague.com) on Kingsland Road. Loungelover is a cocktail bar spilling out from quirky restaurant Les Trois Garcons (www.lestroisgarcons.com), for refined after-dinner drinks in eccentric baroque and art deco surroundings.

Shoreditch House

1 Ebor Street , Shoreditch, London, E1 6AW, United Kingdom

Shoreditch House shares an entrance with its members club, a hop across the road from Shoreditch High Street Overground station and a short walk from Brick Lane, Spitalfields Market and Liverpool Street.

Planes

London’s City airport is a 20-minute drive from Shoreditch House. From Stansted, the Stansted Express (www.stanstedexpress.com) will get you to Liverpool Street in no time. Driving, you’re looking at 50 minutes along the M11. International travellers can also use Gatwick, a little over an hour away.

Trains

The nearest National Rail (www.nationalrail.co.uk) station is London Liverpool Street. National Express (www.nationalexpresseastanglia.com) train services run from here all over East Anglia. Various Tube lines also call in here, including the Central and Circle lines; Old Street Tube station on the Northern line is around a 10-minute walk away. If you're headed to Peckham (that other bastion of cool), the Overground across the street will deliver you there in 30 minutes.

Automobiles

The A10 might help if you’ve come by car, but there are enough buses and Tubes to get you on your way around the capital. There’s no parking at the hotel.

Reviews

Anonymous review

I’ve rocked up at Shoreditch House somewhat under-prepared. Coming off the back of a fraught working day and running late to hook up with a hot date for the weekend, I stupidly haven’t thought through exactly what I am wearing; I may even be sporting – oh the shame – last season’s sunglasses. For the sake of your own self-esteem, and to fend off any potential competit…

Shoreditch House

Anonymous review by William Drew, Restaurant writer-upper

I’ve rocked up at Shoreditch House somewhat under-prepared. Coming off the back of a fraught working day and running late to hook up with a hot date for the weekend, I stupidly haven’t thought through exactly what I am wearing; I may even be sporting – oh the shame – last season’s sunglasses. For the sake of your own self-esteem, and to fend off any potential competition, you need to be on your style game in the extraordinary surroundings of what is London’s – if not the country’s, possibly the world’s – most fashionable private members’ club.

Checking in, I assume there’s a fashion event taking place upstairs, such is the parade of rolled-up skinny jeans teamed with side partings (the boys) and towering heels with thigh-skimming summer dresses (you guessed). And there is: it’s called ‘Friday night in Shoreditch House’. And we have front-row seats at the show. In keeping with the ethos of its parent Soho House Group, the entrance to Shoreditch House on Ebor Street is almost unbranded. The ground-floor reception area has a rough-hewn industrial feel befitting its shabby chic E1 habitat. But, believe me, there’s nothing shabby about the club, which operates on the fifth and sixth floors, or its clientele.

Excitingly, ordinary mortals can now step into this rarefied world without paying the hefty membership fees, courtesy of staying at Shoreditch House. The members club has occupied a former biscuit factory off Shoreditch High Street since 2007, bang next door to a brand-new London Overground station. More recently it has converted the adjacent building into 26 bedrooms shrewdly marketed as Tiny, Small and Small+ in name. This ploy successfully downplays expectations, portraying their bunk-ups as cosy little crash pads.

When I join Mrs Smith in our Small+ room we are pleasantly surprised as to the dimensions. What’s more, the space is cleverly designed: rows of hooks replace wardrobes, every nook is used to store little essentials, the minibar is the bedside table, the small but well-formed bathroom packed with every type of scrubbing, nourishing, massaging and invigorating Cowshed product you could wish for. The decor is also characteristically offbeat but effective: New England painted wood and Venetian shutters evoke an airy holiday cabin atmosphere, in immediate contrast to the urban bustle of the streets below.

Having changed into some sufficiently on-the-money evening get-up, we step out onto our room’s large balcony for a welcome aperitif overlooking the East London skyline. Sufficiently reinforced, we head off to meet friends in the sixth-floor poolside lounge bar/restaurant. As it is a hot summer’s evening, this large space with retractable roof is jam-packed with the media and fashion worlds’ finest. An understandable delay in service is offset by the fascinating people-watching – and the obligatory celeb-spotting.

Throughout our stay at Shoreditch House the food – whether served to us poolside by shorts-wearing staff or in the slicker, smarter fifth-floor House Kitchen or Sitting Room – is Italian through and through and consistently excellent. Even better is the group’s Pizza East restaurant on this very same block, and here we enjoy the finest thin-crusted mozzarella-mounded margaritas of our lives. But, in all honesty, we’re here less for the food and more for an unusual-for-us dose of London living: no children, no last orders, no ‘breakfast until 10am only’, no demands, no restraints. The buzzing DJ-serviced Square Bar is open until 3am and we take full decadent advantage.

We do venture forth to work on our retail skills – Spitalfields is a five-minute walk, along with the rest of Shoreditch’s plethora of hip indie shops and markets – but should you want to stay put, a weekend of urban indulgence can be happily accommodated within the confines of Shoreditch House. The Cowshed, newly opened on the ground floor, provides a super-friendly and non-clinical spa experience. (A facial here soon smoothes away the effects of a mild hangover, while my already gorgeous companion’s manicure keeps her up to speed with the fashion mavens of the sixth floor.)

A games room with pool table and in-house bowling alley offer hours more entertainment as does working our way through the once-full glass sweetie jars available on each room landing (sorry). There’s even a new luxury cinema, the Aubin, opened in association with Shoreditch House, just around the corner. While more active guests enjoy the house gym, we contentedly read the weekend papers in the secret Mediterranean-style rooftop garden room, before perusing the eclectic mini-library in the spacious Sitting Room. The latter is an architecturally arresting but comfortable space featuring huge skylight windows, individually sourced ‘statement’ furnishings, high-backed armchairs and impeccable service.

Fantastically unique, but not for the faint-hearted, is the famous Shoreditch House swimming pool. Taking a dip involves parading your bikini'd or trunked self in front of a most discerning audience. This doesn’t appear to put members off. Expecting only a few hardy swimmers one morning, we find it rammed with parents treating their kids to a rare outdoor swim in sunny East London – or ‘Costa del Shoreditch’ as one member of staff refers to it with an exaggerated sigh. In the evening, as a well-lit centrepiece surrounded by daybeds full of cocktail-sipping hot young things, it adds a bit of SATC sexiness to this city. Oh, and the date thing? That went well, too, thanks for asking. She certainly seemed to enjoy the room and the club. It looks like these Smiths will be stuck being married for a while longer yet.

The Guestbook

Whenever you book a stay at a Smith hotel with us, we'll invite you to review it when you get back. Read what other Smith members had to say in Shoreditch House's Guestbook below.

Lucy

BlackSmith

Stayed on
2 Jan 2015

We loved

Loved the room, staff were friendly. Great location!

Rating:
10/10 stars

Anna

BlackSmith

Stayed on
13 Nov 2014

We loved

The whole place is just slick… from the smell as you walk in (Cowshed spa) to the staff, who are all wicked trendy. Decor is something you just need to see.

Don’t expect

The only thing that would of made the stay better is if my hubby accompanied me… would never forgive myself if I never showed him this place.

Rating:
10/10 stars

Chris

GoldSmith

Stayed on
28 Sep 2014

We loved

Small but functional rooms and access to the house just makes this is a great location for a stay.

Guy

BlackSmith

Stayed on
16 Sep 2014

We loved

What's not to like! The place was amazing! The room was beautiful and the club brilliant. The service was excellent throughout and the location perfect for the gig we were going to at Village Underground. They even remembered our free Cowshed gift when we'd forgotten all about it! Spectacular all round. We loved it!

Rating:
10/10 stars

Sharon

BlackSmith

Stayed on
14 Sep 2014

We loved

There was so much to see in hotel! It was extremely stylish and Shoreditch is just fantastic - we loved it. There was a rooftop pool and swimming in Sept can't be bad! All the staff were helpful and fun.

Don’t expect

You should be made aware that if you order drinks from waitstaff, there is a service charge. It was about £2 average each time, which soon adds up!

Rating:
9/10 stars

Fiona

BlackSmith

Stayed on
4 Aug 2014

We loved

Love the vibe. Great to be able to choose where to eat. Relaxed and friendly. Great selection of toiletries, you need bring nothing with you!

Don’t expect

Bathrooms are a little tight.

Rating:
10/10 stars

Andrew

BlackSmith

Stayed on
4 Aug 2014

We loved

Rooms were small but perfectly formed – the toiletries, etc, that are provided free of charge mean that you could turn up without having packed anything. The members club was a revelation – a great range of food, drink and activities, and the atmosphere was lively but you can still find your own space to chill and enjoy company in a more relaxed way: great! The rooftop pool and spaces are a real bonus.

Rating:
10/10 stars

Richard

BlackSmith

Stayed on
3 Jun 2014

We loved

The rooms were small, but perfectly formed! Large bathroom, comfortable bed… what more do you want?

Rating:
10/10 stars

Ann

BlackSmith

Stayed on
21 Feb 2014

We loved

It's the perfect place to stay in London; I loved everything about the place: the room was fabulous (and spotlessly clean) with great amenities (Cowshed products, hair straighteners, tea/coffee, cookies and even pots of porridge), the staff super friendly and helpful, and the club next door has a great vibe and excellent food. It's great value for money. It's my new fave place to stay in London and I can't wait to return.

Don’t expect

An extra lit make-up mirror in bathroom (for ladies and make-up) would be good.

Rating:
10/10 stars

Alison

BlackSmith

Stayed on
25 Oct 2013

We loved

The room was lovely – clean, unfussy but full of treats and everything I needed. It's just the right size for a night and felt very calm. Free newspapers and condoms were a nice touch. I loved breakfast: the big spacious room, with lovely tang of woodsmoke, had every newspaper you could imagine, excellent service and a good menu with great views – it's absolutely a place to linger. The hotel reception was very personal and warm – I was impressed. It is now my favourite place to stay for a flying visit.

Don’t expect

I couldn't make the TV work but I think that was more about me than the equipment and I didn't really mind; beware if your room is on the street side, because Friday night is quite noisy till the early hours.

Rating:
9/10 stars

Alex

GoldSmith

Stayed on
1 Sep 2013

We loved

Shoreditch Rooms is a very lovely hotel in a strategic position to go everywhere in London. Staff members are absolutely efficient, kind and professional, and rooms are fab; everyone is in their own little world where you can relax and have your rest in the best way. During my stay I didn't have time to use the facilities of the spa or gym but I will do for sure next time.

Don’t expect

Hopefully after the refurbishment of the roof terrace everything will be back to normality.

Rating:
7/10 stars

Price information

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